


Isaac and Ishmael

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, West Wing Title Project, plotless character ramble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 17:02:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20450540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: His father chose other sons before Damian was even born.





	Isaac and Ishmael

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [**West Wing title project**](https://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/386778.html).

Mother has a new project. It is a secret, but Damian is small and well-trained in ferreting out secrets while remaining unseen. 

The project is this: a boy, blank-eyed and clumsy, who eats when food is put in front of him, and sleeps when the lights are turned off, but is otherwise unresponsive to commands. Damian has tried. He concludes that it is not defiance, but a lack of any higher brain function that leaves his demands unfulfilled. 

He feels nothing but disdain for the mute creature; weakness is a thing to be scorned, to be scourged away like the dead skin of a healed scab. He ignores the uncomfortable twist of something in his belly that might be nurtured into compassion, had he a different upbringing. 

Mother is tender with this boy, her words soft and her touches gentle, in a way that Damian had thought was for him alone. It is beyond all bearing that she wastes her time and her care on someone so patently unworthy of it. The next time Damian finds him alone, he lashes out, expecting easy prey, and learns that the boy might not speak or understand, but he fights with a shockingly well-trained ferocity. 

Mother pulls them apart, a pained look on her face, and he endures a lecture about lowering himself to grappling in the dirt like common rabble, and counts himself lucky that his punishment isn't worse. Perhaps the humiliation of being matched by a mindless mute is punishment enough. 

Damian doesn't see the boy again until many years later, and he is no longer mute or mindless. That ferocity remains, though, and now Damian can see his father's hand in Jason Todd's training as easily as his mother's.

It is bad enough that his father chose other sons before Damian was even born, that he does not disown them upon Damian's arrival. That he does not trust Damian to be Robin, even after Damian spends so much time unlearning his earliest lessons and trying to mold himself in Grayson's image in order to live up to the expectations set for him. 

Grayson, at least, is an adequate mentor, though Damian would never tell him so. He has come to cherish his time as Grayson's Robin, even if it sometimes feels disloyal to Father. After all, Father was disloyal first.

As for the others...

Grandfather has become obsessed with Drake, and Damian knows he is well out of that. He could almost bring himself to pity Drake, if he weren't too busy worrying that he will never surpass him as Robin, even though the name and the legacy are his now and he is clearly the superior fighter. 

(He accepts Cain as his sister as he once would have accepted her as his bodyguard; she is stronger and better than all of them, and there is no shame in acknowledging that. He only hopes she continues to teach him, and that he continues to be worthy of it. And if those lessons include compassion as well as capoeira, well, she might know something he doesn't. He would never call _her_ weak for being kind.) 

But _he_ is the son of the Bat and the heir to the Demon, and yet _Todd_ is the one who received his mother's warmth and care when he should have been the object of scorn and pity. _Todd_ is the one who clawed his way so deep into his father's heart that even pit madness and murder cannot remove him. Even now their estrangement is softening into détente, despite Father's ironclad rule about killing. 

Todd is wanted. 

Drake is wanted. 

Damian is...tolerated. 

And that is _intolerable._

Before arriving in Gotham, Damian was told his blood was what made him special; now it gains him nothing but distrust and disrespect. 

Grayson promises him that Father will come around, and Cain confirms that he cares about Damian but is bad at showing it, but Damian finds little comfort in their assurances. He does all that is asked of him and more, and wonders if there will ever come a day when Father will want him, _choose_ him, instead of grudgingly accepting his presence. He wonders if he will ever get tired of waiting.


End file.
